Brain Filters
Photo by Stephen Kraakmo
Imagine that your brain is like the camera on your phone.
Much like the camera on your phone, your brain is constantly capturing images of the world around you and storing all of this information into your software. Brains and cameras are extremely high tech, fancy machines. Brains and cameras can choose what to focus on, zoom in and out, and add filters to the images they see.
Right now on social media there are about a thousand different camera filters available to choose from. You can make yourself have cat ears, bigger lips, perfect skin, or you can become a hot dog with a face.
What is a filter, really?
A filter is something that is (metaphorically for iPhones) placed over the camera lens and then changes the very image you see. It alters the reality in front of you in some way. It can be subtle or glaringly obvious, but regardless, it becomes altered.
This is the same with your brain and the multiple perspectives you can simultaneously hold. The varying filters you have on your brain control the very images you see outside of yourself.
The problem is, you aren’t even aware of your own filters or where they come from. You aren’t conscious to that fact that they can be replaced, removed, or adjusted according to your goals and ambitions in life. You simply think they are one with your brain and your identity.
(side note: I would liken a blank camera, with no filters added at all, to an enlightened meditative state, where thoughts have become meaningless and you have transcended all physical matter. Since probably neither of us are there yet, we are going to be brain cameras with lots of filters on them today.)
Let me really break down this analogy.
You’re a teeny tiny baby boo, your brain actually is that meditative, open state (pretty cool). Now, here comes your parents and society and the education system, and they all slap on about 1000 plus filters to your brain without your consent or awareness. Bam. They have now altered and formed your perspectives in a pretty extensive way. You don’t even realize they are just optional filters, though. You’re just a kid! So you grow up and accept them as the only concrete truth and reality.
There’s a filter about appearance and how one should look in order to gain approval (hello insecurity). There’s a filter about interpersonal communication and how you should express your emotions when you are upset (hello suppressing everything til I explode). There’s a filter about shame and morality (hello alcohol and depression). There’s a filter about virginity and worthy career choices and how a marriage should look and your worth being tied to your productivity and on and on and on and on.
Right now, in this very moment, you have hundreds and thousands of filters on your brain that were all placed there by the time you turned 7. And you still simply accept them as your reality. But, just like a filter, this reality has been altered. This image is completely distorted from the original. You’re only seeing your life through a lens (or collection of lenses) that is purposefully changing your perspective.
If you removed all the filters, if you tried on some different lenses for size, even just momentarily, you would finally be witnessing things as they truly are. You’d finally have the freedom and awareness to choose whichever filters you want.
When you aren’t aware of these filters, they continue to function out of your subconscious awareness. Meaning they control the bulk of your consciousness. You aren’t in on the day to day operations here. You’re in the back seat being driven by a driver that you haven’t even met. Your subconscious is the brilliant part of your brain that conserves energy. It doesn’t want to take up too much energy each day having to relearn how to put on clothes or brush your teeth, so it memorizes it all and then delegates these functions to the automatic part of the brain. And your subconscious has zero plans or motivations to take them out of there. It’s already done its job. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
Here’s the problem: all of these shitty-ass-dusty-ass filters are causing you entirely too much anxiety, insecurity issues, self sabotaging behavior, depression, substance abuse, emotional addiction, and crippling self doubt.
These filters are projecting a not-so-ideal image of your present and and creating a not-so-ideal image of your future.
These filters are what is holding you back in so many subtle ways. But you aren’t even realizing it because you haven’t done the inventory to discover which filters you are currently working with.
Coaching is an extremely effective and quick way to do this inventory.
Coaching identifies all of your outdated filters and replaces them with all the new shiny amazing ones that you really want.
Most of the filters you currently hold come from scarcity, lack, and fear based thinking processes.
Most of the filters you desire are abundant, generous, and fulfilling ones.
Making this drastic change requires a ton of energy, effort, and skill.
Overriding the subconscious mind is not for the weak hearted. Not for the complacent.
This leap is for the people who are determined to live a fulfilling and rewarding life.
This process is for the people who are committed to creating their ideal life on purpose and then actually doing the gritty work to make it a reality.
This work requires building the many skillsets it takes to transform our inner emotional worlds.
I want to give you all these tools and more.
I want you to have the filters that are perfect for you and decided by ONLY you.
I want you to have all of the filters that allow you to create a life of abundance and wellbeing,
with ease.
